Vulnerability Details

Affected Products and Versions

PTFs are available for releases 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 of the IBM i operating system.

Remediation/Fixes

See Workarounds and Mitigations below.

Workarounds and Mitigations

Releases 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 of the IBM i operating system are supported and the vulnerabilities associated with the applicable CVEs will be mitigated by applying all of the applicable PTFs listed below.

The IBM i PTFs listed in this Security Bulletin can be loaded and applied independently of the Power FW fixes that have been created to address the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Both the IBM i and Power Firmware fixes are required to mitigate the vulnerabilities. If the IBM i PTFs are applied before the Power Firmware fixes, then mitigations for the IBM i LPAR may not become effective until Power Firmware fixes are applied and an Initial Program Load (IPL) or Live Partition Mobility (LPM) operation for the IBM i LPAR is completed.

Note: Please review the Power Firmware Security bulletin available via the link provided for information related to recently released Power Firmware fixes required to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

The PTFs released on February 22, 2018, in combination with the recent Power Firmware fixes, are required to mitigate the vulnerabilities on all POWER7 and POWER7+ hardware models that run the IBM i operating system. The PTFs can be loaded on all other Power hardware models but they are not required to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

Note: Please review the Power Firmware Security bulletin available via the link provided for information related to recently released Power Firmware fixes required to mitigate the vulnerabilities.

The IBM i PTFs released on February 8, 2018, in combination with the recent Power Firmware fixes, are required to mitigate vulnerabilities on all Power 7, Power 7+, and Power 8 hardware models that run the IBM i operating system.

The PTFs released on January 26, 2018 are required to mitigate the vulnerabilities on all Power 8 hardware models that run the IBM i operating system. The PTFs can be loaded on all other Power HW models but they are not required to mitigate the vulnerabilities. Additional PTFs addressing other hardware models will be released as they become available.

Release 7.1 – MF64571 Release 7.2 – MF64565 Release 7.3 – MF64568

PTFs released on January 10, 2018

Release 7.1 – MF64553 Release 7.2 – MF64552 Release 7.3 – MF64551

Important note: IBM recommends that all users running unsupported versions of affected products upgrade to supported and fixed version of affected products.

Get Notified about Future Security Bulletins

Subscribe to My Notifications to be notified of important product support alerts like this.

Reference

Related Information

*The CVSS Environment Score is customer environment specific and will ultimately impact the Overall CVSS Score. Customers can evaluate the impact of this vulnerability in their environments by accessing the links in the Reference section of this Security Bulletin.

Disclaimer

According to the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is an "industry open standard designed to convey vulnerability severity and help to determine urgency and priority of response." IBM PROVIDES THE CVSS SCORES ""AS IS"" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. CUSTOMERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ANY ACTUAL OR POTENTIAL SECURITY VULNERABILITY.